I’ve been playing around with Pear Deck, seeing if I can use the tool to boost engagement in my US History classes. I had created a set of slides that I wanted to go through in class, and many of the slides included graphs or images that I wanted the students to interpret. So, I thought, why not use Pear Deck so that I can see their responses to the prompts in real time?
Here’s what I learned from the experience:
A. Asking students to respond to a prompt on Pear Deck is great, if the prompt requires extended thinking and writing, not if the prompt is a quick question meant to be covered briefly.
When I was asking students to shift their focus from class discussion in order to respond quickly to the stimulus on Pear Deck, I found that I was actually losing student engagement. Each time they had to write a response on Pear Deck, I was basically asking them to shift tasks, which resulted in distractions.
Additionally, as the students were frequently writing in Pear Deck, they quickly lost track of the fact that they also needed to be taking notes. Using Pear Deck actually distracted them from recording important ideas in their notes.
Finally, though I was able to see the answers and check for understanding in real time, the questions were not super difficult, so it was rare that there were any misunderstandings that needed to be corrected. Furthermore, sharing the students’ answers was not all that beneficial, because almost all their answers were the same. And, any misunderstandings that popped up could easily have been corrected without the Pear Deck.
In other words, I was using Pear Deck to ask the wrong questions.
B. I realized that next time I use Pear Deck, I’m going to present more complicated stimuli, which will require more thought and longer responses from my students. That way, when they turn to Pear Deck to respond to the prompts, they will actually have the time to settle and focus while using the tool. Additionally, the more complicated questions will result in a wider variety of answers, which should make the process of sharing out responses much richer. Finally, I am more likely to see significant misunderstandings, which I can then correct one-on-one or with the whole class.
I’m excited to keep playing around with Pear Deck to determine how best to use the tool.
Hi Nathan thanks for sharing this! I have been debating about dabbling in pear deck and I actually feel like I have more insight as to when I might be able to successfully use it in AP Psych – thank you for sharing!
That's really interesting- my experience in science is pretty much the opposite! I use PearDeck for my warm-ups, and where it really shines is in highlighting misunderstandings that the class has from the previous day or in calculations. I also use it to check in mid-class, and the simpler the question the better it works! I absolutely agree with the attention-switching though- I have to build in explicit slides where they can take notes and others where they are explicitly practicing the skills. Neat to see how different disciplines use the same tools differently!
What a great reflection. I had similar frustrations when I used Pear Deck during online school. Perhaps it's time for me to try again!
This was so helpful. I am starting to build Psych Realism and wondering what tools to use. I did not make the leap last year with Criminal Justice but I actually now see how I might try to implement. It actually sounds like you would gain more use of this on student directed things that are higher order like FRQs and document analysis stuff
I primarily use Pear Deck as a listening comprehension tool in Spanish. I describe sentences, or whole stories and students draw what they hear on Pear Deck and I publish it live so students can see what others are drawing and they can check their own understanding. The general student consensus is that they don't really like Pear Deck, but they like when they get to draw on Pear Deck in Spanish.